Tip for restaurant investors: buy

Investors who like to buy restaurant stocks tend to ask the same question: How’s business?

Well, for all of the gut-wrenching headaches the restaurant industry suffered during the depths of the recession, here’s one it didn’t suffer much then that’s back on the front burner: job openings.

The job opening rate in the hospitality industry hit a post-recession high in April, the number of vacancies topping 600,000, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Opening Labor Turnover program.

Specifically, there were 625,000 job openings at restaurants and lodging places on the last business day in April, on a seasonally-adjusted basis. This represented an increase of more than 100,000 job openings from two months earlier and marked the highest monthly level since the bureau’s job opening data series began in 2000, says Bruce Grindy, chief economist for the National Restaurant Association.

The restaurants-and-accommodations sector’s job openings rate – which represents job openings as a proportion of total employment – stood at 4.8% in April, up from 4 % in February and the highest level since September 2007. In comparison, the job openings rate in the overall economy was 3.1 % in April, which suggests that hospitality businesses are having a more difficult time filling vacancies, Grindy says.

Restaurant labor shortages are typically a good sign of one positive thing: The economy’s coming back.